


After The Last Midtown Show

by DisasterSoundtrack



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Midtown, The Academy Is...
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 05:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2495942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisasterSoundtrack/pseuds/DisasterSoundtrack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am slightly drunk, just enough to be on the verge between hysterical and existential. Gabe, on the other hand, is drunk in a very sad way, a lost poet counting the stars and slurring out lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After The Last Midtown Show

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based around 'After The Last Midtown Show' by The Academy Is... being read as William's love letter to Gabe.  
> (Hey, Cobra people, I hope this will cheer you up a little in the recent tragedy. Fangs up and never say die)

It's past midnight and the street is still buzzing with the noise from the venue. The crowd flows back downtown, yelling, drinking, dropping bottles, sometimes people stop to make out, leaning on the parked cars. The air carries their grunts and whispers and I'm a little jealous of each and every one of them.  
  
I am slightly drunk, just enough to be on the verge between hysterical and existential. Gabe, on the other hand, is drunk in a very sad way, a lost poet counting the stars and slurring out lines. We hide from the crowd and he sits down on the pavement, his back against a corner stone wall, hand fumbling for a pack of cigarettes.  
  
He reaches for my shirt sleeve and drags me down, so I sit next to him.  
  
"Care to smoke with me?"  
  
The pavement is cold. Gabe's breath on my cheek is too warm to be real, but it is.  
  
I reach for the cigarette, even though I usually don't smoke.  
  
Gabe takes a drag, long and deep, and slowly releases a gray cloud from his mouth. He rubs his face with an open palm like he's very tired.  
  
"I really don't know how am I supposed to feel now, William."  
  
"Drunk, maybe?"  
  
He sighs heavily. His hand finds mine somewhere in the tangle of our limbs and holds so tight my fingers start hurting.  
  
"Fuckin' miserable sounds more like it."  
  
A neon from a closed supermarket nearby lights up Gabe's eyes in blues and reds.  
  
People on the street are screaming and shouting and I can almost hear the noise of my own heart, which is telling me this is the best time of my life. It really shouldn't be, with Gabe down here broken and lost, after the last show his band has ever played. But as I look at the chaos and the speed the days are going by, an image so intense I will forever remember every second of it, as the words spill from my pen onto a page and my fingers line up on a guitar effortlessly, I am convinced this is as good as it gets.  
  
Gabe drops his cigarette. He looks at me and I take a mental picture of yet another perfect moment. Gabe might be crying.  
  
I lean in and kiss him, hard. I just go for it, not for the first and not for the last time, just one of many, because he is Gabe and we are Gabe and William and this is just how we do. Right place, right time.  
  
Gabe's hands are in my hair in a moment. He mumbles something against my mouth, either something dirty or pathetic, considering the state he's in, and I let my hands wander beneath his t-shirt. I want to touch him everywhere. I want to make him forget the break up of his band, at least for tonight. He'll have plenty of chances to drink in front of the mirror, but not tonight. I'm not gonna let him slip away.  
  
Our tongues brush against each other with little electric shocks. I am thinking of Gabe pouring his heart out on stage tonight, top of his game, a light going out in its prime, and I hook my leg over both of his.  
  
Our foreheads touch when he whispers, "Let's go, Bilvy."  
  
"Where to?"  
  
"Anywhere but here."

*  
  
The morning light cascades across the bed, breaking on William's angelic face. How did we get here? I vaguely remember him telling me his parents' house is closer than the apartment he shares with a roommate, then I guess he called a cab and I fell asleep with my head in his lap at some bus stop, abandoned at 3 AM in Chicago.  
  
I just hope we weren't too loud when we came here.  
  
There are noises downstairs, a tap running, a coffee machine, voices. Bill's parents are probably getting ready for work. He is still asleep though, hand fisted into white sheets, chest rising and falling with even breaths. I feel like kissing every single inch of his skin.  
  
So my band is broken up, last night was the most poetic experience of my life, like leaving a piece of my heart there on the stage, hell, maybe my entire heart, like trying to escape Death but not really, like walking on burning coal, and nothing will ever be like this again, that I am sure of. Now I am lost, a nobody, I have nothing to do and nowhere to go, yet somehow this gorgeous boy still believes in me and doesn't shove the love I give him back in my face.   
  
Bill wakes up with a sudden start. He rubs his eyes, casts me a look, then glances at the door listening to the voices downstairs.  
  
"If we keep quiet, they won't know we were ever here", he tells me quietly and shuffles close to hug me good morning and kiss my neck.  
  
This is my home from now on, I think. Anywhere with William.  
  
So maybe the best days of my life are now after all.

*

After we met, we spent three consecutive days almost entirely in bed, astonished and dumbstruck by what happened to us and how strong it was. Bill was still a kid, barely out of high school, and I was a burning out almost - rock star with very little to care about.  
  
"Why now? Why here?" I asked him over and over again, and he had no answers, no answers but his long fingers touching my face and lips hovering over my chest wonderingly.  
  
Somehow, my center of gravity has relocated.

* 

We were living in our own little world, Gabe and I. Our own little bubble. We couldn't be together all the time, but when we were, we would take as much of it as we could. I kept dragging Gabe everywhere and sometimes people were mad at me, but I didn't care. I was in love and they could shut their faces about it.  
  
I am waiting for him at the airport, wrapped tightly in a sweater and a scarf covering half my face (Sisky was right, it's cold outside). He should be there by now, people from his flight have been showing up at the gate for like 5 minutes.  
  
Finally I see him, tall, denim jacket, dark brown hair and a black suitcase, a smile even brighter than usual when he sees me jumping, waving to him. Gabe approaches me and takes me in his arms, burying his face in my hair and breathing a sigh of relief. I smile against the crook of his neck.  
  
"Welcome home, Gabey."  
  
"Oh my God, I fucking love you, Beckett."  
  
Our little world is complete again.

  
_Tell me if I'm wrong but why would we change a thing?_

 


End file.
